This paper explores the purported negative influence of foreign domestic helpers (FDHs) on child second language acquisition (SLA) by studying Hong Kong Cantonese children's listening ability in second language (L2) English. 31 kindergarten 3 rd graders aged 4;6 to 6, and 29 1 st year secondary students aged 11-14 who have had a Filipino domestic helper at home took part in the study. In addition, 34 youngsters (20 in kindergarten, 14 in secondary) who did not have a Filipino helper participated as controls. Results from two listening tasks (picture choosing task, sound discrimination task) suggest that informants do not differ from the control in their abilities to listen to American-, British-, and Hong Kong-English, and that they are better at listening to Filipino accented English than the control. These findings cast doubts on the anecdotal belief of the harmful effect FDHs have on children's language acquisition including an L2. Moreover, the additional effect of being familiar with another variety of English is arguably a desirable outcome given that English is used as a lingua franca among non-native speakers on a daily basis in this highly globalised world.

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There is a widely held belief that Hong Kong as a community is suffering from an ongoing decline in its standard of English. A very cursory search in the Internet directs readers to many articles lamenting the purportedly poor English standard of

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Research addressing second language (L2) speech is expanding. Studies increasingly demonstrate that a learner’s first language (L1) filters the L2 input, resulting in learners misperceiving what they have heard. This L1 filter can result in learners perceiving sounds not actually present in the input. We report on a study which explored English consonant clusters and short, unstressed vowel perception of 70 Arabic-, Mandarin-, Spanish-speaking foreign language learners and 19 native English speakers. These are the vowels which speakers from two of the L1s typically insert in their production of English to break up L1-disallowed consonant clusters and the schwa which is documented to cause both perception and production problems. Results show that participants misperceive stimuli containing consonant clusters and counterparts where clusters are broken up by epenthetic/prothetic elements. In line with Sakai, Mari & Colleen Moorman 2018. We call for the inclusion of such findings on perception in pedagogical advice on pronunciation.